I’m pleased to be hosting Lynn Weingarten on the blog today for an interview, as part of the blog tour! The tour schedule can be found at the bottom of the post.

If there’s an upside to having your heart broken, it’s this: A broken heart makes you brave.The first day of sophomore year doesn’t go the way Lucy planned. After a summer apart from her boyfriend, she’s ready to greet him with a special surprise and instead gets a shocking one in return: He’s breaking up with her. Beyond devastated, Lucy has no idea how she’s going to make it through homeroom, let alone the rest of her life.Enter three stunning girls with the unnatural ability to attract boys and an offer Lucy can’t refuse: They can heal her heart in an instant. And then she’ll be one of them—a member of a sisterhood that is impervious to heartbreak and has access to magic distilled from the tears of brokenhearted boys. But to gain their power, Lucy must get a guy to fall in love with her the old-fashioned way, and then break his heart in the next seven days.While the sisterhood may need another Heartbreaker, Lucy’s only desire is to get her ex back. But how far is she willing to go, and who is she willing to cross to get what she wants?

Where did the idea for The Secret Sisterhood of Heartbreakers come from? Did it just pop into your head one day, or did it slowly take form over time?

The initial seed came from a book I read– a non-fiction book about how to pick up women. In the book, groups of guys would go out together and use various tactics to get ladies and I started thinking about how it would be fun to write a book about a group of girls who did a similar thing. The rest of the idea grew quickly from there.

While writing TSSoH, what were your writing routines? Did you stick to a daily word goal you wanted to hit, or were there days where you couldn’t write anything? About how long did it take you to write the novel from start to finish?

I wrote most of TSSoH very late at night. Sometimes I wrote on the roof of the apartment I lived in at the time, often I wrote with the lights off and candles burning. I’d get in the writing mood by listening to various magicy heartbreakery songs (including lots of Loreena Mckennit and also the song Maneater). I definitely took days off while I was writing, although not many and I really tried to power through when I felt stuck. One thing that really helped me was that I didn’t write the first draft in chronological order. I had enough of the plot figured out ahead of time that I could jump around between chapters as I went. This made it a lot easier to unstuck myself on stuck feeling days – if I wasn’t getting into the next chronological chapter, I’d flip through until I found one that I felt like writing.

Which character did you enjoy writing the most, and which one gave you the most trouble? While I personally loved Olivia, Liza had this spunk, and was the perfect character for loving and hating at the same time.

Thank you! Liza and Tristan were probably the most fun to write. Liza because she is such a sass pot and Tristan because he is very jokey. Lucy was a bit hard to write because her heart iscompletely broken and at the same time she’s just learned that there’s magic in the world. So on one hand there is this really difficult terrible thing that she’s dealing with and at the same time that she’s suddenly understanding that the world is more amazing than she ever imagined. Trying to keep track of how she might feel was definitely difficult.

One thing I loved and disliked at the same time was Lucy’s choice in the end. Instead of going the predictable route, you chose the other way. Was it hard to make that choice?

I knew right from the beginning what I wanted the ending to be. I’m not surprised you had mixed feelings about it! I figured a lot of readers would. But I felt like she had to make the choice she makes in order for me to tell the story I wanted to tell, which continues into the next book.

The way TSSoH ends leaves enough open for the possibility of sequels. Will we be seeing any, or are you working on something completely different now?

There will indeed be a sequel, which I am currently in the process of revising!

And lastly, what novel has had a lasting impression on you, as a reader and a writer?

It is too hard to pick just one! I will say that some of my favorite writers are: Lucy Ellman, Graham Greene, Jennifer Egan, JK Rowling, Tom Robbins and Jane Austen. And all of their books have affected me as both a writer and reader.

Thank you for your awesome answers Lynn! It was a pleasure to have you on the blog today.